


For The Job

by wowthatsloud



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Pre-Relationship, unbetaed, unedited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 15:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2657495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowthatsloud/pseuds/wowthatsloud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being there, now, in an expansive 1800s colonial manor that had been done up with as much chandeliers and gold trim as possible, didn’t phase him. Standing in a man’s house wearing a very flattering and very expensive tux planning to steal right from under him, didn’t phase him. Looking at all the people milling around, probably worth the GDP of several small countries combined and wearing twice as much, didn’t phase him.</p><p>Parker, standing next to him, effortlessly flawless in a midnight blue evening gown, and matching sapphire necklace that rested on radiant silken skin… well, maybe that phased him. </p><p>Sometimes Hardison has to pretend a little bit when he's on a job with Parker. What he isn't sure about is having to pretend a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For The Job

The data drop for this time round would be huge. Hardison would have preferred to download via remote access as he was used to, but the encryption on Jacob Caldwell’s servers were very pesky. A little number he was familiar with – actually, some might say he’d help invent – where the data encrypted on a rotational lock. Nothing was impossible for Hardison, but the model they’d used was very tough to crack in the first place, and when he’d gotten though the first time he’d only managed to get a few megabytes before being shut out again.

So the bad news for him is he’d have to find some way to get it in person. The good news for all of them, however? Caldwell was paranoid, and didn’t trust the partners on his board as far as he could throw them. That meant all of the data was locked up in the secure servers at his home.

The better news? Caldwell was an extravegant man. As of three days from now, he would be holding a celebratory get together, and he’d been kind enough to invite all of the crew at Leverage, inc. With a little encouragement from Hardison’s computer, naturally.

“Hardison, Parker, do you have position?” Nathan was the stand in on board Lucille that night, as the hacker’s participation required more hands on work.   
“All clear, boss.” Hardison spoke lowly and evenly into the comm, as he’d only done a hundred times before. A hundred different places, a hundred different marks, one certain eventual outcome. Being there, now, in an expansive 1800s colonial manor that had been done up with as much chandeliers and gold trim as possible, didn’t phase him. Standing in a man’s house wearing a very flattering and very expensive tux planning to steal right from under him, didn’t phase him. Looking at all the people milling around, probably worth the GDP of several small countries combined and wearing twice as much, didn’t phase him.

Parker, standing next to him, effortlessly flawless in a midnight blue evening gown, and matching sapphire necklace that rested on radiant silken skin… well, maybe that phased him. But only a little bit.

“Alright, when you’re ready, there’s a hallway right behind you with some stairs right at the back of it. Once you’re at the stairs, go up, and the server room is second on the left. And remember—“  
The both of them stood slightly more upright at Nathan’s abrupt call to attention, fractionally tilting their heats inwards to favour the comm ear.

“Jacob Caldwell is paranoid. He is looking for a reason not to trust you and to catch you out, especially tonight of all nights. Assume his men share that mentality, so Parker, Hardison, stay on the lookout and, uh, be prepared.”

Eliot and Sophie were in direct opposite ends of the manor at that point in time, but he could imagine both of them reacting in the exact same way. They both knew what the ‘Be Prepared’ speech stood for, and the wrinkled nose of irritated disgust was the classic favourite whenever the quite intimate heavy breathing and smacking noises of their abrupt cover came over the comms. They would have to deal with it just as he did though. It was all part of the job.

Hardison’s brow creased, but he said nothing. As far as he was concerned, he was here to suck some data off a hard drive and get the hell out of dodge. He was suited and shaved, Parker was too (or, the female equivalent) and they weren’t standing in for a pair of German exchange students, so he didn’t see what there was to miss.

During his distracted musing, Parker was alert as ever, feline eyes narrowing as she canvassed the great room.  
“Five guys in this room,” she said quietly to him. “Watch out for them.”  
Hardison paused. Sweeping the gallery with his own eyes, he could only see cheerful partygoers enjoying their time. Nothing of the beefy, cross-armed personell with looping earpiece wires snaking behind their necks.

“The clothes, Hardison,” she said, as if sensing his directionlessness. “That guy over there with the jacket that’s too big, standing by himself next to the mini quiches.”

Hardison slowly, casually lifted his gaze in the general direction of the hors d’oeuvres table. He saw the guy, but nothing immediately popped out at him as someone on the job. Parker, as ever, was more skilled than he in that department. Parker continued.  
“To the left by the patio doors, black suit with ugly brown shoes.”  Hardison didn’t look this time, he’d seen the guy already and remembered him. His silver hair and grumpy expression had said dowdy uncle to Hardison more than hired security.

“One by the entrance, one by the DJ booth, and one sitting on a chair pretending to eat cake. They’re not good,” she added, for Hardison’s benefit as well as everyone else’s. “One of them is watching us, though.”

And that one? He wasn’t good either, but… almost. His knockoff Rolex was almost good enough to look real, he’d worn proper shoes, and there was no hideously mismatched tie and shirt like with the other guards. What’s more is, he’d been smart enough to attach himself to someone – the elegant sexagenarian he laughed with over his slice of cake hadn’t been someone he’d arrived with, but they interacted with each other as if they had.

More importantly, the glances he shot over towards herself and Hardison were almost quick enough not to notice. Just before checking the time, after going to blow his nose in a hanky…

Yes. This guy was almost good. Parker’s lips curved into a smirk. That was good. It would at least be a little fun, that way.

“We’ve got an audience,” Parker said to Hardison, slipping her hand into his as she walked them to the drinks table. Rows and rows of diamond flutes sat before a range of bottles, from the most expensive wines to a few assorted soft drinks. A few of the soft drinks had been poured out beforehand, and Parker made a big show of serving out two flutes of champagne before moving to block the rent-a-cop’s line of sight. She handed Hardison one of the other flutes, some lightly carbonated elderflower and grape concoction that sent bubbles up her nose. But more importantly, that didn’t affect her concentration.

“Cheers.” She sent him a wink, touched glasses before bringing the ‘champagne’ to her lips. Hardison looked at her strangely then, but drank anyway.

Over by the west wing of the mansion, Eliot was sharing some gentlemanly banter with a few in Caldwell’s inner circle, gaining valuable information, and more importantly, getting them very drunk and distracted. Enough tumblers of whisky had been consumed that Eliot felt comfortable enough standing aside slightly and speaking lowly into his comm, still in full view of men that were too drunk to be suspicious.

“My side of this is just about wrapped up. Sophie, what’s the ten-four?”

Sophie was by the east, entertaining Mrs Caldwell’s group of friends with a scinnilating tale about hunting ostriches in rural Zaire. She was slightly more discreet about turning her head aside and speaking.  
“All but convinced Frances to call the police on him. She thinks she’s doing it to help, poor girl.”

Nathan coordinated aboard Lucille. “Parker? Hardison? How about you, we need that data.”

“Give us a minute,” Parker said. She and Hardison were on the dance floor, not strictly out of choice. Granted, there were a few worse places to be on a job than moving along to music in Hardison’s arms, but they needed to get this data downloaded before the party started winding down. Mr Almost-Good’s hawk eyes were making things difficult though. There was no reason to go to the server room with him tracking them like this, because he’d catch up with them before they’d manage to download anything or even get inside. With Eliot and Sophie occupied at equal distances away, and Nate running ship all the way from Lucille, it was up to her to create her own distraction.

Even though gliding around in Hardison’s arms was far from the worst way to spend time during a job.

Parker had another flute of ‘champagne’ in her hand – she’d made sure to have plenty in front of the rent a cop, and had become gradually more giggly with each one. She noticed him gradually easing off as a result, he was only looking over at them once in a while now, but once in a while was still too often. Parker needed to keep him out of commision for a significant chunk of time.

Hardison, beside her, watched Parker’s eyes begin to analyse and assess, trying not to notice the absence of warmth where her body had been a few minutes ago. “What are you up to,” he murmured, eyes taking on a playful glint as he looked down at his partner.

Parker brought her hands and shoulders up in a lackadaisical shrug, raised eyebrows and pouting lips completing the pretended clueless expression. As she did so, the flute she held in her left hand began to tip, and it spilled a careful, uniform stream of clearish liquid onto the polished marble floor.

The person that walked into it was quite the unfortunate victim of circumstance. A portly man of fifty or so, the beetroot complexion that had come over his face and neck showed he’d already overloaded on his tipple of choice, and was now trying to counteract that with food. He had piled every kind of hors d’oeurvre and mini pastry on the table onto one small plate, and his mountain had been teetering precariously as he turned to head back towards his table. He never stood a chance – the glistening, newly wet surface of the hard floor provided no resistance to his gripless dress shoes, and it was a spectacular, almost graceful diving arc as he and all of his food fell.

Not, of course, without taking its collateral damage. A few ladies suffered some errant globs of guacamole to the backs of their dresses, but the brunt of the damage, as intended, had been towards the most innocent passer-by. Rent-a-cop had been making his way towards the food tables, doing his obligatory rounds of I’m-a-normal-guest-here, when he walked right into a flying pile of tartar sauce, mini shish kebabs, nacho cheese and god knows what else. A nightmare for any decent suit, and naturally, one that the good hearted citizens attending this party would feel compelled to mourn over.

“Oh, no!”  
“Gosh, are you okay.”  
“Oh, that’s everywhere. Hold on and see if I can find some vinegar to splash on it…”

It was perfect chaos.

“Hardison, now.” She tugged at his fingers, leading him away by the hand even though their guy was looking anywhere but at them right now. They found the hallway and stairs Nate had indicated earlier, and were at the door in an instant.

Parker made a face when she discovered the door was locked, as if chiding herself for not expecting it. The way she bunched her nose like that was kind of cute.

The way she took out the bobby pin holding her hair up, letting it fall in a cascade of long, flowing blonde was… slightly more than that.

Hardison almost didn’t hear her when she spoke to him, already having made mincemeat out of the locked door. “I said, do you have the thing with you?”

Right, the thing. Hardison had brought along what looked like a standard usb stick in his pocket, but in reality it held a capacity of over three terabytes – more than any commercial computer – and he’d rejigged the accessing counterpart to enable data dispension almost five times faster. That was crucial for their job tonight but still put them at a slightly compromised position – considering the size of the files, they’d have to be in there for almost fifteen minutes.

The server room was nothing but several stacks of warm, whirring, blinking hard drives, all connected to Caldwell’s main networks. After setting off a preprogrammed macro from his phone, all that was left to do was plug in the memory stick and wait until it was done.

Hardison did that, and they had nothing between them but the darkness and the mechanical whirring of the computer machines, for a while.

Then, Nathan. “Parker, Hardison. Where are you on shaking off your guy?”  
Parker spoke. “We got in the distraction, but I don’t know how long it’ll hold him off for.”  
“Sophie, Eliot, any chance of backup down there?”  
Eliot’s gruff voice sounded a little too forcefully over the comms, as if he was somehow strained. “Afraid I have a situation over here, Nathan.” His last words were sounded out by the sound of glass breaking and incredibly loud shouting, followed by some scuffling noises and a few grunts, and then Eliot was back on. “Kinda got my hands full.”  
Sophie, on the other hand, was barely a whisper. “I’ll try to get out of here but there are absolutely no promises.” The background noise of her comm was startlingly too close for comfort, almost as clear as Sophie’s own voice. It was a singular, anguished wail from a woman who was either very emotionally distressed, or about to be eaten by rabid wolves, and what the rest of the team couldn’t see was the grifter politely trying to detatch herself from the mark’s hysterical wife that had latched on like a barnacle. “I’ll try my best, but it’s a bit hard avoiding this attention.”

Nate was back on. “Alright Hardison, Parker, I’ve got the security cameras you hooked me up to but they’re pretty much useless. No entrances, none of the hallways… it’s like he set it up this way on purpose.” A rare tone of genuine frustration crept into Nathan’s voice at this. “Alright, I’ll keep an eye out, but it’s not great. Assume someone is coming after you at all times, okay?”

Parker looked at Hardison, and he, at her. At all times. They both knew what that meant, having been put into the situation a few times already by now.

Except this time when he brought his hands around her waist, and she, around his neck, she said something that puzzled him more than a little bit. “You ready?”  
“I- yeah…” Hardison tried to mask the uncertainty, tried to steady the voice that cracked when he spoke but he couldn’t say he was fully used to this yet.

Not fully. It was still fairly normal feeling Parker’s arm around his neck pulling towards her, or the initial, soft contact of her lips on his. Well, as normal as something like that could ever feel, which was to mean he could keep his heady feelings of lovesick schoolboy infatuation under check for the most part. He could shut off that part of his mind that would pester him, thinking, wondering, dreaming about what that would feel like if it were real, and not just for the job. He could override that part of his brain and enjoy the time for what it was – a simple, brief means to an end, and nothing more.

What he hadn’t counted on was continuing. It was as he felt Parker’s lips soften and part under his that the alarm bells started going off inside his head. This was uncharted territory. Their previous encounters had been brief, almost chaste, a means of tricking marks that were already convinced or not paying enough attention to care otherwise. _He hadn’t counted on carrying on._

And now Parker was kissing him, but really kissing him, as in kneading his bottom lip with her teeth kissing him, and he couldn’t restrict himself like he’d trained himself to all the other times even though he knew he was only going to second, and third, and fourth guess himself over this later.

Why lie. At the time, Hardison – pragmatic, sensible, cautious Hardison – didn’t particularly care for later. He kissed her back, softening the set of his jaw to deepen the kiss, feeling Parker’s tongue run along his lip, and letting go completely. Her breathing grew heavy, and while she placed hands on his torso that made Hardison think all about what he wanted to do with his, he instead kept them in the relatively moderate waist area.

Parker broke for air, and it might have been the tint from the whirring humming LEDs behind them, but she looked well and thoroughly kissed, Hardison noted, not without a hint of pride.He looked at her, cracked a smile, and was ready to crack a joke along with it, when Parker shook her head slightly.

“Not done yet.” She took him forwards by the lapel as she said this, so the words were spoken against his lips, a ghost of speech before pressing her lips to his again.

He thought he’d been prepared.

In actuality, there had been something in that brash, open mouthed kiss that disconnected the last part of his mind that had remained on. Rational, reasoning, thinking-brain had taken a vacation. This brain… he wasn’t sure whose it was, but it wasn’t there to mess around. Or maybe it was.

He leaned into Parker as she began working on his shirt buttons, hurriedly taking them down as Hardison let his head and his hands roam, running his mouth along her face, cheek, chin, neck, just below her ear (which got an unexpected but very audible sigh from her) and she ran fingers along the toned, muscled chest she’d exposed, back along a broad shoulder, and their bodies were pinned almost flush but they kept going. Parker trying to get the rest of Hardison’s shirt off, and Hardison persisting with the maddening neck and ear kisses that drew involuntary gasps from deep in Parker’s throat.

That was when, with perfect timing, their rent-a-cop burst into the room, sporting a vengeful mindset and a hopelessly soiled shirt.

“I knew--”

Hardison could honestly say that he had not noticed the man until he raised his voice some – his mind, naturally, being on other matters.

“Hey, you aren’t supposed to be here.” That tone of voice was promising – it was more wary than accusatory, but Parker was only good with swinging him all the way. There would be no reason for him not to talk to his boss about them then, and that just couldn’t do. Parker wondered if seeing what she felt pressed up against her leg then wouldn’t be enough.  
“Turn around,” she said into the side of Hardison’s face.  
“Huh?”   
She gave him a hand, pushing a shoulder so Hardison was faced directly towards the security guy, startled expression as well as an uncomfortably tight looking pants crotch.

That broke the other man. He tried not to glance down, did anyway, and cursed as he looked away, following the four letter expression with something along the lines of “Damn kids.” They were home free.  
“Just… you can’t be in this room right now so get lost, okay?”

Parker pulled at Hardison’s hand again, throwing the security guard a smug grin before leading him out.

They were in the hallway now, headed back towards the staircase where they would make their eventual return to the party and the crowd of people, before leaving after a non-suspicious amount of time had lapsed. They had to get themselves sorted first, though.

Hardison, fumbling to redo the shirt buttons that had come mostly undone. Was any of that real? Did it actually just happen? Parker smoothing her dress and hair next to her indicated it must have, but he wasn’t so sure. He finished with his shirt, mismatching the buttons, and headed down the hallway for a few paces before turning around and stopping.

“Where are we going?”  
“Back downstairs.”

He held up a finger, opening his mouth as if to say something, but letting the words die on his lips.

“Are you forgetting something?” Parker filled in.  
“Yeah. Am I?”

Parker held up his dinner jacket, that had been dropped in the server room when they were, you know…  
“Oh.” Hardison walked towards her to grab it, and a sign of how royally messed up he was, he barely noticed the brushing knuckles as he grabbed the jacket that he would have usually driven himself mad trying to ignore. He turned on his heel again, taking steps towards the staircase that were a lot more confident than he felt.

Behind him, Parker cleared her throat. Hardison looked over his shoulder at her, as she held up the small, rectangular shape of the flash drive that he had totally forgotten about.

Parker watched his face shift until his mouth was at a perfect ‘O’. The expression of realisation of how badly he’d messed up was almost comedic. “Right, right,” he said, going back towards Parker and reaching for the drive. It was between her two fingers, and instead of relinquishing it when it came within Hardison’s reach, she stole it away again instead.

She shook her head at him almost pityingly before walking past him with the drive still in her hand. Hardison wasn’t himself, slow reactions and a newly-shot attention span, but he still had a pulse, and the back of Parker moving slowly down the hallway was managing to raise it yet again.

He walked to keep up with her, desperately racking his brain to figure out where she was going with that flash drive. Had he forgotten something? Was there a second server they had to his? He desperately scoured the depths of his mind to find out – he’d rather not open his mouth and alert them to how much he hadn’t been paying attention.

Distracted, he almost didn’t register when Parker stopped at a door, just beside a small bathroom, and opened it to slip inside. Following her, Hardison was puzzled at the cramped space he found himself in – old overcoats and stacks of cardboard boxes meant that there was barely standing space in the narrow closet for one of them, let alone two.

Hardison looked down at Parker, trying to make out the lines of her face in the dim lighting. He also tried not to squint like the clueless buffoon he was probably coming across as.  
“Parker, weren’t we supposed to get everything in the server room?”  
“…Yeah,” she said slowly.  
“So, um, what are we doing in this closet?”  
Parker looked like he was asking the most obvious thing in the world. “I wasn’t finished before.”

By the time Hardison realised what she’d meant, her mouth was already on his.

Nathan was aboard Lucille getting his ass kicked at cards by Eliot and Sophie. After a long day’s job like theirs had been, it was nice to kick back and let off some steam. Eliot was dealing a new hand of cards, when, as if on programmed autopilot, each of them lifted a hand and removed the comm out from inside their ear. All three had heard the heavy, gasping breaths that they had almost become accustomed to, and shared nothing but a complicit exchange of looks before continuing with their game.

Hell. They all had to let off steam somehow.


End file.
